


Recovery

by mumblybee



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen, Psychological Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-30
Updated: 2012-04-30
Packaged: 2017-11-04 14:47:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/395043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumblybee/pseuds/mumblybee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>hold to your gun, man</p>
<p>    and put off all your peace   </p>
<p>        — “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, Sufjan Stevens</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recovery

It was a process, said the counselor, and the others – the medics and the art therapist and the physical activities supervisor and the psychiatrist – they echoed these words until Wash heard it embedded in his footsteps when he paced his room at night. _It’s-a-pro-cess._ He had his own room now and it was strange to have his own space, to not be stepping over Maine’s sweatshirts or North’s comic books or York lying on the floor because he didn’t feel like sleeping in his bed that night. He wasn’t sure if he missed that; he wasn’t sure of very much but he knew he liked that at least it was quiet here, even if they did open the door every few hours to make sure he was still breathing.

 For the first month or so (that he could remember) it’d been every half hour. Once or twice they’d found him scratching at the walls, trying to write his name into the plaster (because he didn’t want to forget it, because it kept getting overtaken by the roar of _AllisonALLISON no no don’t hurt me AllisonAllisonAllison_ ), fingernails all bloody.

But he was better now. Not all the way but enough not to leave bloodstains on the walls, enough that they only opened the door every three hours. He built his nights around it; at eight-thirty he paced ( _it’s-a-pro-cess_ ) until the nine o’clock medic came, and then he went to bed.

“Is that seriously supposed to make me feel better?” he finally snapped one day during his morning session with the counselor. There were two sessions every day, morning and evening, and in between there were scheduled activities and the art therapy was stupid, and the physical activities were too easy, but he did whatever they said because it was _structure_ , and he was starved of that.

            “Excuse me?” the counselor replied, so monotone that it hardly sounded like a question at all. He had a desk, like a teacher desk, something solid and sturdy between him and the psychotic ex-freelancer seated in the chair a few feet away. It was a deliberate distance.

            “Everything’s a process,” said Wash, sitting up straight in his chair, shoulders set, _ready for orders sergeant_. “Dying is a process. That doesn’t make it better.”

            Torture, too, was a process. Very systematic, the way they’d torn his mind – sliced it down into small slivers and –

            The counselor leaned forward over his desk. “Have you been thinking about death frequently, David?”

            No more Agent Washington; he was not their soldier anymore. Just a ward.

            “I’m not suicidal,” said Wash stiffly. “It was just an example.”

            “You seem agitated.”

            He looked at the counselor, at the teacher-desk and his file resting on it, at the writing scrawled across papers too far away to read.

             (He remembered when his eyesight had started to go, when he’d had to get glasses, when he’d started to feel like there wasn’t any _time_ left, and so he…was…no, he… _wasn’t_ , he wasn’t that person…)

            “I feel agitated,” he said.

            The counselor frowned. “That’s a shame. You had been making progress.”

            Progress. Process. He couldn’t escape either of those words, he couldn’t break away because it was always _happening_ ; the procession continued marching on like a fucking funeral parade through the beaten up remnants of his brain.

            “David? How are you feeling right now?”

            Such calm concern. Because no matter how he was feeling, the procession would march; there was nothing he could do to impede the process. And if he tried there’d be a drug to stop him. They only gave him sleeping pills now but there’d been others before when he couldn’t stop the murmuring voices from threading through, overlapping with his own voice and slipping out his mouth.

            “Fine,” said Wash, louder than he’d meant. The counselor raised his eyebrows so Wash repeated it quieter. “Fine. I’m fine.”

            They could quiet him, if they wanted, corral his mind into a corner where it couldn’t wander or deviate from keeping track only of the simplest functions. They could make him catatonic if they wanted, but they had trained him too well to let that go to waste. So they fed him and they counseled him and only slightly medicated him – only as much as he needed to function the way he was supposed to. He was a machine that they did not want to rust.

            “Why don’t you go relax now,” said the counselor, “and we’ll resume later.”

-

_Later_ he was calm and said everything was fine, no he didn’t hear voices, yes he knew his name, no he did not feel suicidal, yes he could envision himself in the future. Of course he could. They were going to need him again eventually, after all, and then there wouldn’t be anymore asinine questions like these.

So he was not exactly surprised when one day the counselor told him, “Congratulations. We believe you have made sufficient progress. We have a job for you.”

            And just like that he exchanged hospital clothes for under-armor, switched out slippers for boots, and they brought his armor out of storage and it felt weird again like it had in the beginning when he’d first worn it, and his head ached every now and then with the wrong memories and he felt a little bit more than _agitated_ – but that didn’t matter. Nobody asked him how he felt. 

            When they told him his new name, Recovery One, he almost laughed.


End file.
